The Money

As anyone that has ever purchased a home can tell you, it's a trying experience. Up front, I will say that working with Chase Bank has been wonderful, and they are very helpful in the process, but I forgot how much paperwork there is when deciding to purchase a home. I bought my first home back in 1999, and it's only gotten worse.

They want to know everything. How much do you make, how much do you have in savings, what holdings do you have in stocks and IRA's, what are your debts, do you have insurance, previous home ownership experience, tax returns for the past three years, credit reports, and so may documents to sign it will make your head spin. Three hundred dollars for this and three hundred for that, pay that guy, and this group, and this much down payment. Fax this, sign these 24 documents and scan them and e-mail them, yada-yada-yada. Sometimes I wonder if it's all worth it. What a pain in the ***. But, we trudge along and grit our teeth.

I do understand that they have to be careful loaning large amounts of money to people they know nothing about, being that we had a major financial meltdown in this country because of bad lending practices and fuzzy math. I'd do the same thing. But so far, everything is looking good. Both our credit scores were in the "excellent" range, plenty of money for the down payment, a good price for the house, and a wonderful interest rate will all add up, in the end, to being happy homeowners once again.

Rusty the dog just watches us buzz around the apartment and wonders what it's all about. He probably thinks we're doing it all for him, and in a way, we are. He has never known what it's like to live in a house, or have a yard, or not be attached to a leash. He's about to experience it all for the first time, and he'll be a happy puppy. We'll all three be happy homeowners, and we can't wait.

In The Beginning....

We have been wanting to get a house for years, and I think our opportunity has arrived.

Lawrence has been living in this same apartment for almost 14 years, and I have been here just over 9 years. Let's not forget Rusty McNose, the Alpha Dog and supreme leader of this household ever since he was a puppy. We both gladly bend to his every want and desire. It's puppy law.

We won't bore you with our past, including where we have lived before and how we got to this point in our lives. Everyone has been there...moving around from place to place.

We have had the amazing opportunity to live relatively cheaply for the past 9 and 14 years since Lawrence works in the leasing office of the apartment complex we live in, thereby we receive free rent, electric, cable TV and water as part of his compensation. A sweet deal. Now, we have to change our mindset as we approach home ownership. There will be bills to pay every month. Lots of them. Something we're not used to, but better learn quick. No more runs to the electronics store to pick up the latest new toy. No more extended vacations. No more (maybe just less) runs to the casinos. Nope, we stay here and put everything we make towards the new house. It's what we've been wanting, and now's the time to dive in head first.

The Inspection

Under recommendation, we had a professional inspector come to the house for a full checkup. We were worried at first that he would find major structural damage, as well as other catastrophic problems. Luckily, he did not, but there were problems, which can be expected on a 25 year old house. He said the foundation was good and solid, and the house is structurally sound.

The major problems include the air conditioner being “red tagged” by another inspector, stating that it needed to be cleaned. That’s easy enough, but there was a lot of rust on it, and the gas flames weren’t burning pure blue, which is a sign of a bad fuel-to-air mix.  It also didn’t have a drip pan or drain for condensation collection. Luckily, the side of the little room it’s in is against one of the bathrooms so we should be able to put in a pan and run a drain line through the wall. The good news is the air conditioner works very well, and as anyone from Houston can tell you, you gotta have air conditioning. We will eventually have to replace the unit as it is also 25 years old, but that can come later. We’ll definitely have it cleaned, the air ducts cleaned and mounted correctly in the attic, and check the Freon level in the compressor.

The hot water heater is toast. Not good. Hello, Home Depot…we need a hot water heater. The pilot light won’t light, it’s very rusty all over, and the bleed drain is discharging into the garage instead of outside. This is something we will fix right away.

The garbage disposal is history. Oh, it turns on, but there is a gaping hole in it, so it’s basically not usable. Yep, Home Depot again. They’re gonna love us.

They left a refrigerator, which was nice, but it looks like they never cleaned it. We’ll roll it outside and hose it down, clean the coils and disinfect it. The good news is that it cools very well!

The stove is a gas stove, and the burners work, but the oven does not. I don’t like this cheap thing anyway, so that won’t be an issue for very long.

The main electrical breaker box will need replacing. Someone went in and did all the grounds incorrectly, and double-tapped one of the breakers with two lines. The brand of box is also notoriously bad and cheap, so once again, Home Depot and a professional electrician will be needed.

Someone installed, and very poorly, some outside motion-sensing floodlights.  They’re large and ugly, and the wiring is exposed with screw-on wire nuts for the connection. What were these people thinking?

The house has two smoke detectors, and one of them doesn’t work. Luckily, they’re inexpensive, so we’ll be able to easily install one in every room. On all the windows around the house, the springs that hold the windows up are broken, so when you raise a window it will come slamming down immediately. We have no idea how to fix that, but Lawrence is good at figuring things out, so it will be fixed eventually. One day we hope to be able to install high quality double-pane insulated windows all around for better energy efficiency. We’ll have to save for those as they can be very expensive.

The roof has some issues as well. From a quick glance, it looks good, but closer inspection revealed that there are a number of loose shingles and some of the edges have loose or missing trim, probably from Hurricane Ike. The roof also has only one air vent on it, and there needs to be either more vents installed, or when they redo the roof install one of those top ridge vents that runs along the entire peak of the roof. The underside of the overhang has some loose boards that need to be secured and sealed, and the ventilation screens need to be replaced as well.

There were a few minor problems inside, but were mostly cosmetic and easily fixed.

So, overall, we’re in good shape. Luckily, we don’t need to do all the expensive things right away, but the minor stuff we can do easily and quickly. Our first project is to clean everything. The walls and ceiling need to be swept of dust, the baseboards cleaned, appliances cleaned or removed, a lot of things replaced or painted, and eventually we’ll replace the carpet and tile flooring. Those will be the very last things we do before we move any furniture in. We like wood flooring, but not sure where it would work in this house. We’ll see.

So, in the meantime, we wait. The deal is done, the paperwork has been sent to the bank for approval of the mortgage, and hopefully one day soon, we’ll have the keys to the house.

We’ve already shopped for all of the above mention items, but haven’t purchased anything. We’re gonna need buckets, cleaners, money, time and patience for this project, but we have a good feeling about it, and we’re ready to turn this abused and dirty renters bungalow into a beautiful showplace.

Stay tuned for pictures and video, and get the popcorn ready. It’s gonna be a show!

The House

The house is a 4-bedroom, 2-bath home. It's all brick around the outside with no siding. It's tan in color, and is in great shape with no physical damage. The front yard is small, but the backyard is huge! There are a couple of bushes in the front of the house, but the backyard is nothing but grass. No trees, no plants, no shrubs. A perfect “clean slate” for Lawrence and his green thumb to fix up the way he wants it. I have the black thumb of death with anything resembling foliage, so I'll have very little to do with it. I'll help prepare and plant, but he will be doing the upkeep. Oh, and he's mowing the grass. Me and manual labor don't get along, so it's all his.

There is a wrought iron fence across the front door entrance and on the side of the house heading into the backyard. We will paint all that black eventually. The rest of the backyard is surrounded by wood fencing, and a couple of planks need replacing. The roof looks good, but some of the trim around the edges needs replacing and repair. Eventually we will need to replace the roof as it seems a number of the shingles are loose, thereby allowing water to seep in. More on that later. We will have a two-car garage. My Honda has never known a garage, so this will be a nice change to help protect the car from the elements and most bad people that want to break into it, which I found out from talking with one of our new neighbors, has happened before. Everyone knows who is doing it, but no one has any evidence. It's one of our neighbor's kids who is in and out of jail a lot. I wonder why. That will change when we move in. Again, more on that later.

Now, to the inside of the house. I'll start off by saying this was a rental house before, and the renting family had three kids. Need I say more? Stains on the carpet. Stains on the walls. A mutilated air duct vent way up high, which we still can't figure out how that happened. The place is filthy, and it's obvious that when this house was foreclosed on, they moved out and didn't bother to clean anything. The kitchen cabinets are damaged or missing, and they used bad contact paper on the walls in the kitchen that was supposed to look like wood. Nice try. The garbage disposal has a hole in it. The water heater won't light, so there's no hot water. Luckily, the central air conditioner and heating unit do work, but it's 25 years old and will need replacing eventually. A quick pass with the Shop Vac will collect assorted dead cockroaches and other matter which has collected everywhere. The rest of the interior looks like an apartment, and what I mean by that is it has white walls, tan carpet, and the cheapest ceiling fans, light fixtures, faucets, toilets and appliances they could buy. Absolute crap.

You may be wondering at this point why we would want a house like this. The answer: It's a foreclosure, and we got it for $74,000 with a 3.875% interest rate. We jumped on it just in time since the economy is slowly getting better and cheap houses are disappearing fast. According to real estate records, this house was worth $140,000 at one point, and that's with the description I gave above! Just wait until we get in and redo everything. Egg-shell walls with beautiful tow-tone paint. Crown moldings on top and chair rails at the right level. New tile on the floors as well as new carpet. New cabinets and appliances. We plan on making this a showplace, but it will take a lot of elbow grease, time and money, and we are both prepared for that. Maybe in a few years when the economy is great again and we want to sell it, I see no reason why we couldn't easily double our money, if not more.

The nice thing about all of this is that we will continue to live in the apartment rent-free for a few months while we work on the house, and the apartment is only one mile away. Another nice thing? The closest Home Depot is only half a mile away. Buy your Home Depot stock now. We also frequent Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel, Ikea and Williams-Sonoma. They’re not close, but trust me, we know where they are.